


Fallen

by HeartlessMemo



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst, F/M, Guardian Angel, Guardian Demon, Past Child Abuse, Robbery, Shame, Smoochies, damnation, selling your soul to a demon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-03
Updated: 2020-01-03
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:00:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22092208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HeartlessMemo/pseuds/HeartlessMemo
Summary: The Reader sold her soul to Crowley long ago. Since then Crowley has acted as a (mostly absent, but sometimes not) “guardian demon.” But the one night she most needs a guardian Crowley is MIA. Aziraphale steps in to save her in more ways than one. Plus smoochies!
Relationships: Aziraphale (Good Omens)/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 26





	Fallen

**Author's Note:**

> Not a new fic, but posting it here for the first time. Find me on Tumblr for more stuff: [chelsdub](https://chelsdub.tumblr.com/).

You’ve been standing outside Crowley’s flat, finger pressing the buzzer, for what feels like an hour. It’s late, it’s pouring rain, your hands are shaking with fear and adrenaline. And your stupid demon overlord can’t even answer the door.

A shiver wracks your form as you huddle beneath the narrow awning over the doorway and wrack your brain for alternatives. Your place was right out. The mugger had taken your wallet and made a show of looking over your ID. What if he went there and robbed you a second time? What if he didn’t stop at robbery? The police. A normal person would go to the police to report a crime. But what can they do? They aren’t going to station someone outside your flat for protection on the off chance that this low-life decides to turn up. No, you need Crowley to deal with him. Anyway, that’s the deal isn’t it? You should get something out of being damned for all eternity.

Only Crowley isn’t home and you have nowhere else to go.

The sound of footsteps sloshing through the oceanic puddles reaches you and a celestial voice calls out, “Oh my dear, are you all right?”

Not him.

Anyone. Beelzebub, Hastur, Satan himself, but not the angel. It’s not that you’re so profoundly fallen that you’d prefer evil over goodness in *theory.* It’s just that in *practice* the angel Aziraphale is the embodiment of everything that you can never have. You’ve never felt comfortable around him. His goodness, his warmth, his love…it all reminds you too much of the tarnish on your own soul. Your name is in the book of the beast. You are going to Hell when you die. But he makes you wish it could be different. And that hurts.

You sigh and look up, meeting his concerned eyes, “Hallo, Aziraphale. Do you know where Crowley is?”

The angel sniffs in distaste, “Called to his…head office, I’m afraid.”

You nod and stand there stupidly avoiding eye contact.

“Come back to my shop, won’t you?” he asks “You’re soaked through!”

You feel yourself nodding in defeat. Miraculously, as you walk the few blocks to Aziraphale’s bookshop, not one single rain drop touches you.

***

Aziraphale has you rapidly installed in a cushy armchair, wrapped in a toasty, warm quilt and clutching a large mug of hot tea. He sits across from you and clucks his tongue worriedly.

“What happened?” he asks. The way he watches you, with pity and concern in his gaze, makes you realize how horrible you must actually look. As you bend your head to sip the tea you wet your lips and taste blood. Of course. The mugger had slammed you into the rough brick wall of the alley, a knife digging into your back, before he’d hissed into your ear, Shut up or I’ll kill you. You remember the ringing pain of your face bashing into the bricks. The heart-thumping fear and disgust as his hot breath slithered over your neck. His groping hands searching your coat pockets. The point of the knife digging into your back, a constant threat…

Your hands shake and you nearly lose the tea cup before Aziraphale rushes forward and takes it from you, placing the cup on a side table and holding your hands in his.

“Shhh…” he comforts, rubbing his warm palms over your knuckles and grounding you in the current moment. “You’re alright now. You’re safe.”

Tears spill over your cheeks and you cry in earnest. It’s all too much. Why is he being so nice to you? He knows. You know he knows. Crowley told you, years back, how Aziraphale had lectured him about taking advantage of a human child, too young to sell her own soul. The angel had been angry, he’d felt disappointment. But the deed had been done. She was damned…*is* damned, tainted by the fires of Hell. If there’s no going back then why does he care?

You fall forward into his arms and clutch the pristine white waistcoat in your fists. For a wild moment you *wish* harder than you’ve ever wished that he *could* Save you. How stupid. You can’t just erase your name from the demon’s ledger. Nothing is that easy, as you well know. If it were then you wouldn’t have *had* a father who tormented your mother, who beat you almost to death. Your twelve-year-old traumatized prayers that he would just die wouldn’t have been so powerful that they could conjure a demon in your hospital room.

You’re losing yourself in memories, but even so you hang on to Aziraphale like a life preserver. He strokes his hands up and down your back and makes little shushing noises and you can’t remember a time that you ever felt this safe and loved. Slowly, in a ragged whisper, you tell him what happened. Not just the mugging but all of it. Your childhood: the bruises, the lies to teachers, the aborted escapes with your mother in the middle of the night, and the last beating that nearly killed you. The massive heart attack your father suffered not one week later. The reason for your debt.

“Oh, my dear,” Aziraphale whispers. “I’m sorry.”

“I prayed,” you say, leaning back and locking eyes. “I prayed and a demon answered. What would you have done, Aziraphale? What *could* you have done?”

The questions aren’t meant to accuse. No, you want him to tell you that you did what you had to–that you had no other choice. But Aziraphale’s face is stricken. He’s thinking about everything the Almighty has to say about suffering and sainthood and the likelihood that he would have had nothing to offer a twelve year old girl in pain. Instead of replying he reaches a hand slowly toward your face and brushes his fingertips against your bottom lip. Warmth blossoms from his touch and you feel a thrill of nervous energy run through your body as he heals you.

The wound closes, the bruises fade to nothing and his fingertips remain just barely brushing against your lips. For an eternal moment you sit there caught in each other’s gaze and then all at once you’re falling together in a kiss that’s at once the gentlest and the fiercest kiss of your life. Aziraphale wraps his arms tight around you, his hands sneaking underneath the quilt and brushing up along your sides. You unlock your fingers from their grip of his waistcoat and cup his face. His touch lights you up inside. You feel a part of him, a part of the warm, glowing atmosphere that is Aziraphale. You never want to stop feeling this way and yet in a little while you naturally break apart. Foreheads leaning together, lips close enough to *almost* touch, you breathe into one another, both of you panting with the intensity of the kiss. You feel a little smile tug at your lips, that *you* could make an angel lose his breath. Aziraphale smiles in return and you feel, for the first time, that you’ve *truly* fallen.

***

Crowley looks over at the angel and arches an elegant brow, “You know what it would mean, don’t you?”

“Yes, of course!” Aziraphale snaps. His expression softens as he continues, “I-I…don’t care.”

He’s holding Crowley’s ledger in his hands, the book open to a page near the back with a single name printed in childish handwriting.

“You’ll be condemning another soul to the pit in her place. Just so we’re clear,” Crowley sighs. It won’t be much work for him to find someone else to take her place in his ledger. But he must admit, he’s a little surprised his staunch friend is flouting his, well, …ineffable moral code.

And yet, there it is: with a flourish Aziraphale waves his hand over the page and Y/N’s signature disappears. Now you see it. Now you don’t.

Crowley watches the small smile on the angel’s face for a disorienting moment and wonders, What the Heaven happened while I was away?


End file.
